Remember people like your barber when the Left tell us that this Immigration
Bill is racist

I missed a trick on Thursday morning, the day the Government announced its new Immigration Bill. I was at the GP’s surgery for a check-up, and forgot to ask the doctor how he felt: one of the Bill’s proposals is a requirement for “overseas nationals” to demonstrate legal residency before they can access NHS services, such as a GP consultation.

This measure – as well as similar ones to require landlords to carry out checks on the residency status of putative tenants – has met with opposition. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty (and more or less a force for good in this world), told a television programme that the changes could cause a “race relations nightmare”, further announcing, oddly, to this newspaper that landlords might err on the side of “caution… checking people who look brown regardless of whether they are British or not”.

Is the implication that there are no “brown” GPs or landlords themselves, or that any such agent, regardless of tint, is incapable of saying “Could you just prove to me your residency status?” without giving offence? As it happens, I had to show my passport to the GP practice that morning, to register with its online appointments system. The reception staff didn’t seem concerned and I didn’t feel insulted; still less did I sense some racist subtext.

Employers have been subject to such requirements for years, so those in receipt of taxpayer income (through running a surgery, or the collection of housing benefit) should not expect to wash their hands of the issue. The heart of the matter is either we stop being squeamish about the word “illegal”, or we do nothing about immigration control.

Since the settled will of this nation is that it would like to regain control of its borders, then actions inimical to illegal immigrants must follow. Turning a blind eye to abuses of the health and housing systems is not only wrong, it is in opposition to the covenant by which we agree to pay our taxes at all (to protect British people in need, not those who are here illegally).

Worse, such abuses were self-evident to any inner-city Briton even while Labour ministers were telling us a) there was no immigration problem but b) all immigration was good anyway, so that c) anyone opposed to it was a racist. For all these reasons, the Government is right to act.

So far, so Right-wing. But I kicked myself for not asking my doctor his views: I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice in the same day. After the joy of a normal blood pressure reading, I went next door to north London’s finest barber for a haircut and a shave.

I like hearing the barber talk about his family back in Morocco: it was a cold morning on Thursday, suddenly cold, after a mild week, and just the talk of sunshine brought warmth to his shop. “How can you bear this climate?” I asked. “Why did you move to Britain in the first place?”

“To study,” he said. “You know how it is, I travelled a lot one summer, all over Europe, then in France – you know that France had colonised Morocco – and then I came to London, and made friends here, so I stayed. I dropped out of studying…”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “My parents were not happy with that. But then I worked in some kitchens, and then did odd jobs, such as on building sites, and after a while, all my friends are here. Some have moved to the country now. With their kids.”

Our eyes meet in the mirror; both sets are smiling. I know from previous chats that he’s not married, has no children, and lives with a man. He knows the same about me, in that curious telepathy of the barber’s chair, more emotionally porous than a psychiatrist’s couch.

“I just love it here.” And he does. I remember the Jubilee: his family had come to visit, and he told me his joy to see the Queen “for real”; quite literally he bounced with happiness as he talked.

I don’t know his financial status, but I doubt he’s banker-boy loaded. Remember that he’s proud to live here, that he’s worked always to pay his way, that he loves the Queen. Remember him, especially when the Left tell us that this Immigration Bill is racist, because it is his taxes, as well as yours and mine, that currently find their way into the pockets of the employers – and landlords, and physicians – of illegal immigrants.

Remember him, because the apologists for the state we are in, who insult our ability to differentiate between “legal” and “illegal”, who tell us that it’s racist to even inquire about such matters – it’s not people like me they hurt most. Mostly, they hurt men like the barber.

He has light brown skin, coincidentally. But then, so do I. All skins are brown, to some degree or other: just as the herrings which are used to distract us from the real issue – control of our borders – are uniformly red.